Great Sky River (11 page)

They most certainly did.

He was numbed by the incessant drumroll of mech-work around him. Arthur’s intrusion at first seemed a vagrant thought of his
own. “What means?”

The mech civilization undertook centuries ago to change the ecology of Snowglade. They do not function well in the warm, wet
world it was.

“What’s so bad about it?”

Moisture and heat quickly bring rust. Snowglade had Alpine woods once, and vast grasslands that stretched from horizon to
horizon. The mechs came to see if the planet was useful for their projects, and seem to have decided that it was, though of
course it needed what they would call, I quite believe, improvement.

Killeen stopped beside a carboglass device that was milling what looked like large spheres of matted, chromed sponge. “How
you know?”

I was
there.
We were first aware of them as simple explorers. The Clans had set up their Citadels—

“There were more than one?”

Arthur’s smoothcoursing voice paused only momentarily in surprise:

Oh yes, I forget so readily now. You are young. We once had
glorious
things. When we came to Snowglade we were under no illusion that we were safe from mechlife. But we could scarcely cover
an entire planet, protect every—

“Yeasay, get on with it.” He had never heard of anything truly manmade other than the Citadel, only of things fashioned from
mechcraft or stolen outright. The Aspect frequently talked of things which Killeen knew did not exist and so he thought they
were lies or brags or else tall tales to hold Killeen’s attention. The contrast of these past accounts with their present
condition had made the Family seldom consult the Aspects.

The mechs did not confront us directly. Some felt that the mechs scarcely noticed us, or else thought we were local lifeforms
of no real consequence—a view which I suppose history has confirmed, with sad consequences for us all. At any rate—

Here Arthur obviously sensed Killeen’s impatience. His voice speeded up until the images and thoughts came in bursting bluebright
clots, vivid pictures delivered without explanation, letting Arthur’s remembered experience explode directly into Killeen:

We noticed first that winters deepened and there was less rain. Our crops dwindled. We had to undertake some extensive breeding
and genetic alterations to harden them against the warped seasons.

“You savvyed weather?” Killeen was impressed, but wished there was some way he could keep Arthur from knowing. There wasn’t,
of course. He felt the Aspect’s pleased aura.

Understood, yes—or so we confidently thought. Only slowly did we realize that the mechs were deliberately bringing clouds
of gas and dust into Snowglade’s planetary path. They even used fineground asteroids. This brought the dust-storms we thought
were a passing feature of the changing weather, but were in fact causing that weather. The dust smothered our equatorial regions.
Somehow, the mechs contrived to evaporate a great deal of the icepack at the poles. This drove Snowglade toward a dryer, cooler
climate,
using processes I cannot guess. Obviously the mech civilizations have worked this kind of planetary engineering before, and
they well understood the thousands of small side effects one must calculate. It was a feat of awesome power, and one carried
out so gradually we had no intimation of truly fundamental change until centuries had passed. By then our crops had withered
and we were eking out an existence at the Citadels, planting more and reaping less with each passing year. We were innocent,
thinking the mechs at best had not detected us, or at least would ignore us. More the fools, we!

Killeen picked up one of the chromed balls and tossed it to the floor. It shattered into a thousand strands of delicate spooling
fiber, each glinting in the harsh fluorolight. He concentrated on Arthur’s fastpassing talk. Such ancient knowledge he had
always ignored, figuring that Fanny would tell them what was useful. Ledroff, he knew, was similarly ignorant. “The Splashes’re
still left,” he said.

So paltry were our imaginations that we did not at first recognize the significance of the Splashes. Snowglade follows a near-circular
orbit around Denix. Denix itself loops about the Eater in a long ellipse. All our time on Snowglade had been spent in the
warm middle portion of its orbit—after the glacial stage, but before Denix approaches the Eater. Here:

A three-color 3D diagram strobed in Killeen’s left eye. An iceblue dot circled a flame-red globe. Then point of
view telescoped and the globe looped around a hotpoint swirl of colors: the Eater. Numbers and words Killeen could not read
gave slide-sheets of data.

“Yeah.” Killeen rummaged for something to say. “Pretty.”

I do not work out such intricate aids for your artistic appreciation.

Arthur’s voice was stern, piqued. Killeen dutifully shut his right eye. The diagram swelled, showing Snowglade as a mottled
dry disk. Sandy blotches blended into gray, ribbed mesas.

The view was time-sped. Centuries flickered by. Glinting sheets of ice dwindled. Clouds dispersed. Deserts gnawed at the flanks
of flinty mountain ranges.

This is what they have done to approach the climate which mechs desire. And then—

Three notes piped in his right ear, an assembly-call. “Look, gotta go,” Killeen said with relief.

Into his right eye popped a 2D map to guide him to Ledroff.

Killeen could see Ledroff was holding a meeting as he approached. Five Family were sitting on a big brassglass machine at
the end of a tin-roofed assembly shed.

“—since we silenced the managers quickstyle, there’s prob’ly no mayday, no outbound screamers, nothing.” Ledroff was saying
as Killeen dropped down on a polished rampart.

“Ummm,” Jocelyn said doubtfully, fingering a stray tuft of glossy hair, coiling it around her thumb. “Right, we
used
get couple days clear ride. But now?”

Ledroff said, “Our strike was
good.
The best.”

Killeen thought it was pretty routine, but he said nothing. Let the new Cap’n crow.

Cermo-the-Slow blinked owlishly. “Could use the break.”

Killeen asked, “What’s on?”

Ledroff made a little dramatic pause out of putting his helmet on a nearby lever. He was sitting on top of the blocky, alum-edged
pyramid-machine, and control levers sprouted around him. “We’re discussing holing up here,” he said down to them.

Killeen snorted. “We got a step or two still in us.”

“I think we’re still tired,” Ledroff said reasonably. “In the past, no higher mechs showed up ’n’ checked a deadheaded factory
for three, four day. I say we
use
that, rest up.”

Jocelyn said, “Mantis might’ve called some Marauders, try trackin’ us.”

Ledroff nodded, his bushy beard like a frothy explosion beneath the severity of his stiffhaired ridge. Killeen noticed that
the scalping around Ledroff’s backchopped hair was fresh. The slick, walnut skin stretched tight and shiny. He was paying
more attention to his appearance now. “Yeasay—in the open. Here they not look.”

“Whosay?” Killeen demanded as he climbed up a tier on the big silent machine. From there he got a view of the
whole ’plex. Navvys still went about their mutedumb rounds. A perpetual machine hum bathed the area. Among the steady, efficient
trajectories of the mechs, Family moved on their own paths, taking whatever they could find.

Ledroff eyed him. “Isay. Is custom! Family hangs out after a raid.”

Cermo-the-Slow nodded, his big eyes amiable and warm. “We need time, do some ’sploring. Might find more servos, even maybe
stimjacks.”

Jocelyn laughed. “Cermo, no stimjacks in a fact’ry.”

Cermo shrugged. “Could be. Dunno till you look.”

Something in the middle distance caught Killeen’s eye and at first he did not understand.

Ledroff smiled. “Yeasay you, then? Isay we bed down in the big fac’try, post—”

“Wait. See that?” Killeen pointed.

Jocelyn squinted. “Navvy. So?”

“Ever see one like it?”

Cermo said slowly, “Maybe once. Can’t be sure.”

Jocelyn said, “I ’member one somewhere….”

“Earlier today. And I think it was near where the Mantis hit us, too,” Killeen said.

Ledroff eyed the navvy as it approached on crawler treads. It had crosshatched side panels and, though it veered aside to
a factory entrance, its fore-eyes peered at the brassglass pyramid until it vanished. “So?” he said.

“I think it’s a scout,” Killeen said.

Ledroff squinted down from his perch. “Could be different navvy each place.”

Jocelyn said flatly, “Could be not, too.”

“New kind navvy,” Cermo said. “Maybe there’re lots.”

“Scout for what?” Ledroff asked.

Killeen said, “Marauders.”

“Marauders not use scouts, I know of,” Cermo said.

“So what?” Jocelyn asked sarcastically. “Just ’cause you dunno, don’ mean
isn’t.”

Cermo bristled.
“Fanny
knew.”

“Yousay. We got no Fanny Aspect to ask,” Jocelyn said sourly.

“Gotta go by ’perience!” Cermo spat back.

“Gotta use heads!” Jocelyn said.

Ledroff said, “I believe we have to use both.”

Killeen frowned and said, “Listen to Jocelyn, Isay.”

Jocelyn acknowledged this with a curt nod, its energy revealing a contained tension. She had learned Fanny’s ways, too, but
had not missed the old woman’s central and hardwon lesson:
Anticipate.
Savvy the mechthink before it savvys you.

Killeen saw in her slow-smoldering eyes a resentment of Ledroff. Surprised, he saw that Jocelyn had wanted to be Cap’n. He
had been too meshed in himself to see that.

“Navvys
could
be backpackers for a Marauder,” Jocelyn insisted. She had started finger-curling her hair again. Then she smoothed it back
carefully, getting the curls set in the right overlapping waves behind her ears.

Cermo shrugged. “That navvy wasn’t carryin’ anything.”

“Not now, no. Could’ve dumped it,” Jocelyn said.

“For what?” Ledroff asked.

“See what we’re doing,” Killeen said.

“Fanny naysay anything about such,” Ledroff said. Then, hearing how lame the words sounded, he added, “Marauders too fast
for navvy. They’d clean leave ’em ’way behind.”

“Mantis might be slow,” Killeen said. “We never saw it move much.”

Ledroff frowned. Killeen had seen Ledroff on long marches and in battle and knew him to be a cautious, savvy man. Now suddenly
Cap’n, Ledroff was trying to balance the views of the others and find a communal consensus. Maybe that was the right thing
to do. But Killeen felt in Jocelyn and even Cermo a slowbuilding irritation. Ledroff would have to defuse that fast. A Family
should not march or rest while it brewed an anger.

Ledroff was now beset by the inevitable legacy of any Cap’n: the whines of the Family, swirling about him as a natural vortex.
They were a small, steady drain. The pressure of this rain of complaint was always to rest, to allow the older and less hardy
a respite. And any Cap’n, seeing the incremental damage that the Family’s constant forced marching exacted, was prone to listen
to these well-meaning and in fact almost pitiful voices. It was a kindness to let the Family knit up its soreness and strains.
But it was often not smart.

Ledroff said slowly, “I was hoping you’d all be of one mind.”

“Jocelyn and me, we saw that navvy with the Mantis.
We’re
sure,” Killeen said sharply, half to let out steam and half to signal to Ledroff that he, as Cap’n, had to do something.

“Your memory’s alky-fogged,” Ledroff said cuttingly.

“That’s past.” Killeen felt himself redden.

Cermo teased, “Killeen, you should be on our side. We stay here, you slurp some more tonight.”

“I don’t have your honeyroll fat, sop up the alky with, is all,” Killeen said sarcastically. Cermo carried a slight roll at
his belt, visible through the silver tightweave. No matter how hard times were for the Family, Cermo’s
meager bulge stayed, and was in fact a source of some pride for him.

“Marchin’, this honeyroll’ll leave you eatin’ dust,” Cermo said with a harsh edge.

“Not so long’s you run like your boots are tied together,” Killeen retorted.

“You boys mooded for rankin’?” Ledroff said evenly.

This was a signal that only the Cap’n could give and that no Family ignored. Killeen realized that this was what he had half-wanted.
They needed to free the vexings that had mounted since Fanny’s loss.

“Heysay,” Killeen began the ranking. “Smells like you converting that honeyroll to gas.”

Cermo responded, “Then ’least I got some art in my fart.”

“Gas bomb the Marauders, then, let me stay with the old folks,” Killeen said.

Ledroff came in with, “Only thing you blow up is your belly,” directed at Cermo.

“Blow up your mother real good, you watch,” Cermo answered.

“She couldn’t find it, dribblin’ down under that belly,” Ledroff spat out, picking up the rhythm.

“It telescopes out, fella.
Way
out,” Cermo said. “Next time I’m gonna show it off, you stick ’round, hear the joints pop.”

Jocelyn smiled at this and came in. “I think I can see through that telescope, easy.”

“You can look for free!” Cermo cried with glee. He remembered to cover his mouth, but even such basic politenesses weren’t
required in the ranking.

“You mean microscope, it’s so small!”

They went through more rounds, each throwing in a
quick dash of cutting humor. The Cap’n could always order a round of ranking to defuse the tensions that perpetually came
up and, if carried, would fester. The quick-shot talk could abuse or amuse—ideally, both. As the jibes laced across the group,
each person performed and the others responded with answering barbs or releasing hoots of applause.

“Can’t tell Cermo’s fart from his talk.”